Everyone who runs tabletop roleplaying games brings a certain set of influences with them, particularly when we act as the gamemaster. My own influences pull from common ones like Tolkien and Star Wars, but I pull from other properties like Doctor Who and Tintin. Of course we all have our favorite TV shows that influence us, like Breaking Bad, or even the new Dark Crystal TV show. (Seriously, watch it. It’s so good.) But I think the single biggest single influence in my understanding of roleplaying and how to structure adventures comes from my favorite dramatic TV show, Lost.
I can hear a lot of people groaning about this. It’s been almost a decade since Lost took its final bow, and the ending has soured some people on the show permanently. But more than most shows, Lost is actually structured in much the same way GMs build adventures for their groups. There’s a mythology that is often somewhat sketchy in its details, even as it seems to go forever down the rabbit hole. There are the shifting character motivations that turn the plot on a dime, sometimes in ways that serve the needs of the show more than anything else. Even the structure of the show, where characters frequently need to trek around the island to find this or that gewgaw, reflects how many roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons play out.
Of course the ending has made it hard to talk about Lost without people getting upset. I’m not here to defend the ending (not many people want to listen to me anyway), but I do think the show has given me numerous lessons for how to run games more effectively as a GM, particularly from the narrative and character perspective. So here are some valuable GM lessons I learned from Lost.
Note: Lost ended in 2010, which I think is well past the statute of limitations on spoilers. Nevertheless, if you haven’t seen Lost and want to go in totally cold, I do have a couple of small image spoilers here, as well as some other very light plot points. Nothing earth-shattering, but I’d hate for people to feel like I spoiled a show that was so fun because of how unexpected it was.
Make sure your single session is strong.
As TV shows have become more serialized, the emphasis on the individual episode has been diminished. Consider any show that comes on Netlfix. They know they’ll get at least a full season, so they can chop up a single story into different pieces. But like many older TV dramas, Lost was not guaranteed a full run. Each individual episode had to be compelling and exciting in its own right, and even those who were ultimately frustrated by Lost can name some episodes that were so good they hurt. Episodes like “Pilot,” “Walkabout,” “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” “Ab Aeterno,” and of course, “The Constant” told memorable contained stories, even as they advanced the overall arc of the show.
GMs can learn a lot from this. It’s easy to worry about the great sweeping narrative of the show, but the bulk of our time really needs to go into making sure THIS session will be fun. That means we don’t overemphasize any one component too much, like having endless combat dominate the session. It also means we need to begin with a strong punch, and find an ending that will make the players want to come back for the next session. I try to end every session on some kind of cliffhanger, or at least on some kind of major development. Maybe the players are about the enter combat with a crowd of bugbears, or maybe they’ve finally reached the dwarven stronghold. Either way, they’ll be excited for how everything picks up again next time.
Like old network TV shows, we can never be sure that we’ll get to the end of our proposed narrative. We may not have ratings to worry about, but every group has scheduling conflicts, players who move away, and other distractions. Hopefully everything works out, but maximize the time you have, because your only guaranteed session is the one you’re about the play. Make it count.
Let characters interpret their surroundings.
Lost set itself apart with a mythology that was not only dense, but at times was inexplicable. It stretched across millennia, and the characters in the show only ever got to interact with little bits of it at a time. This sometimes resulted in a show where no one seemed able to explain what was going on. Instead they could only ever offer interpretations. Characters like John Locke or Benjamin Linus acted like they understood the mysteries of the island, but as the show went on their understanding was shown to be misguided or outright wrong. Some characters, like the mysterious Jacob, were shown to similarly be in the dark about what was happening. The reality of all of that mythology wasn’t something any one character could know. They could only express it as best they knew how and respond accordingly.
This is a terrific way to add richness to the world of your roleplaying game. You as the GM have the only full knowledge of what is happening in your world, and so it’s tempting to use NPCs as vessels for that knowledge. Maybe it’s a wizard who explains the whole thing to the characters, or an ancient book the players discover that fills in the details. But what if instead of imparting that wisdom to the NPCs, we instead thought about how they feel about the reality they face? If an ancient lich is marshalling an army of the undead, maybe there are some villages that treat that lich like a god rather than a menace. Every NPC in your game will have a certain point of view on the world you’ve created, and we can lean into that as GMs.
Now this may seem like a lot of work, and it could be. You also don’t want the different interpretations to be so varied that it hampers the ability of the players to engage with clues and secrets. But it doesn’t have to be really overwrought. While you can decide the specific perspective of major NPCs, think in terms of communities to simplify it. How would a specific village view the reality of your world? Little touches like this can give great texture to a game world, and it can provide space for the players to interpret the game world as well. They’ll do it anyway, so you might as well build it into the fabric of your game.
Geography is fluid.
If you watch Lost long enough, you will eventually notice that even though the show is set almost entirely on a single island, the actual geography of that island is highly malleable. Think about the stretches where the characters are frequently hiking between their camp, the caves, the hatch, New Otherton, and all manner of ruins in service of some kind of plot device. There never seems to be much consistent distance between any two points. Maybe there was a map in the writer’s room that helped them keep it straight, but in truth it never mattered very much. If the show needed Jack and Kate to be hiking through the jungle for a couple of days, well, then that’s what they would do.
Dungeons & Dragons, long the trendsetter in tabletop roleplaying, has its roots in tactical wargaming. That particular hobby favors precision and structure, which is one reason that D&D from its earliest days asked the GM to create a map for their campaign. Even today, in the fifth edition of the game, the Dungeon Master’s Guide tells DMs to start by making a map of their world, preferably on a hex-grid. Other RPGs have had a much softer understanding of geography, but there is almost always a component of physical space to every game. I do think a map with some key points of interest is valuable, and if you are the type to make a detailed world map, I salute you. But as GMs we have the ability to create a softer geography. No place is a set distance from anywhere else at the outset. Instead, you can look to the needs of your game, and decide that the gnollish camp is, say, three days from the village where the characters are.
In my experience as a GM I’ve run published adventures almost exclusively. However, I’m working on some homebrew stuff as well. My method has been to think about where the characters will start, then to make a list of a ton of interesting locations they could discover. The plan then is to slot those locations into the game when a new one is needed, based on what would be interesting to the players and where they are now. If you need to fill it in on a map that’s fine, but don’t consider any of those places set in stone until you actually need to set them. Not only that, but think of all the interesting stuff they could encounter on their way there. Instead of rolling random encounters, you could formulate a couple good ones for any different kind of terrain, and then insert them when things need a kick. I have always found it more constructive to come up with ideas independent of an actual structure, and allow the players to dictate the structure as the game goes on. We see this most at work when we use a soft geography.
(I feel differently about smaller-scale locations, like the interiors of dungeons. Those benefit enormously from concrete maps, although even then the specific contents are more up in the air until the players are in a room. In that case I make a list of different monsters that I can use, and then I put them in as needed in different encounters. The point is to leave yourself with flexibility, not with a set level that can’t respond to your players.)
Know the expectations of your players.
Lost’s legacy as a TV show will forever be tied to its finale. Instead of unpacking all of the dense mythology, the final season of the show mostly set up a final conflict, and then had the characters resolve that. Along the way there were lots of great character moments, but those who wanted the show to actually explain itself were left frustrated. I have always been one who found the ending moving and exciting, but then I liked Lost more for its ambiguity than for its details. Or to put it another way, the details were interesting to me BECAUSE of their ambiguity, not in spite of it. To explain those elements would be a classic instance of telling instead of showing. But a lot of fans were disappointed because for them the mysteries existed to be solved. Everyone brought different expectations to the show, and from that standpoint disappointment is totally understandable.
Whatever your feelings on the finale, GMs can learn a lot from this. Unlike a TV show, I think GMs are putting together their story purely for the enjoyment of the players. We can’t make big meditations on life and existence if we cannot fulfill the basic need to entertain the people who play our games. This is one place where the difference between games and other narrative mediums needs to be pronounced. You absolutely CAN tell a nuanced powerful story in a tabletop RPG, but as a GM you aren’t doing this for you, or at least not just for you. You’re doing it for your players, and their expectations need to be met on some level, even if you do so by defying those very expectations. As you move toward the endgame of your adventure or campaign, think about the loose threads that are still out there. Is it best to subvert them, or will it be more satisfying to lean into an expected ending? Can they be resolved before you are done? Or will they have to wait until a sequel adventure? If the latter, make sure you let your players know there is always more to be discovered, even if the group can’t continue to play together.
None of these ideas are gospel laws that everyone must embrace if they want to GM effectively. Instead they are specific lessons I learned from one of my favorite TV shows. Maybe they are useful to you as an aspiring or experienced GM. But even if these don’t work for you, all of the stories we experience have the potential to give us lots of tools to create great RPG adventures. Whatever stories you love, you love them because they speak to you. If you can create roleplaying experiences that speak to you as well, that enthusiasm will bleed through for your players.
Games Are For Everyone 